This invention relates to fire escapes for use in evacuating, quickly, a multiple story building such as, for example, where fire threatens the occupants of the building.
Conventional fire escapes have disadvantages. They are generally finite in number, e.g. one or two per floor in a given building, if provided at all, and fixed in place so that, if smoke and flames approach a lower part of such fire escape, it becomes useless to persons on floors above the lower part.
Many prior art devices are known which relate to chutes or tubes for use in escaping high-rise buildings in the event of a fire. Exemplary of such devices are those shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,240,520 (1980) and U.S. Pat. No. 4,099,596 (1978).
U.S. Pat. No. 4,240,520 discloses a fire escape tunnel for use in exiting high-rise buildings. The tunnel includes an extendable, accordion-pleated tubing made of nylon or canvas fabric padded on its inner side, a ring at its upper end attachable to an escape opening of a building, a lower end of the tubing having a soft landing pad, and an exit doorway so a person sliding or being lowered down the tunnel can step out onto the ground at the exit.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,099,596 discloses a device including a normally-folded flexible tube with a landing pad at its lower end that unfolds to a vertical chute condition, the interior of the tube being slippery to provide against snagging and the like, the unfolded tube being formed with elastic restrictions at successive vertical levels that snub the descent of a person descending inside from free fall to an alleged safe speed.
My prior U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,398,621; 4,580,659; 4,582,166 and 4,583,616 all disclose fire escapes and variations thereof which employ an elongated mesh tube or chute through which a person escaping a burning building may descend, from the upper floors of the building to safety on the ground. The escape chute of the present invention embodies many of the basic principles and components disclosed in my prior patents, and the disclosures in those patents are incorporated herein by reference thereto.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,580,358 discloses a safety escape chute having a series of pliant tubular columns connected by resilient portions made of spiral mesh so that when a first escaper is in the chute his weight so deforms the spiral mesh resilient portions downwardly that a second escaper cannot pass therethrough and thus cannot collide with the first escaper at the bottom of the chute.
Escape tubes utilized in combination with an angularly disposed cable are known such as, for example, in my prior patent U.S. Pat. No. 4,582,166 and the apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,339,019.
The present invention overcomes many disadvantages inherent in prior art devices.